what type of radioactive waste produces the majority of total radioactivity?

Answer 1

Most of the radioactivity that most people get comes from:
1. Medical procedures (x-rays, cancer treatments)
2. Natural sources (cosmic rays, argon, potassium in bannanas, carbon-14)

Real radioactive waste has a half-life and a decay energy.
Stuff with big half-life lasts for thousands of years.
Stuff with big decay energy does more damage.
Stuff with small half-life does not last long, but may do lots
of hits before it is gone.

For lots of radioactive waste (especially "high-level" or "trans-uranic" waste) there is a "decay-chain" in which one isotope decays (and releases radiation) to become another isotope, which is again radioactive, but has a different half-life and decay energy. This can continue for a long time, until finally the chain ends with something that is "stable".

"Spent fuel" is essentially the nuclear ashes left when a nuclear power plant finishes a cycle of (usually) enriched uranium. It is so "hot" that it puts a blue glow of "cherenkov radiation" into water baths around it. It also usually has lots of plutonium in it (making it interesting to terrorists). It is nasty radioactive stuff, and a major reason for Yucca mountain.

Answer 2

each and every procedure in nature and in technology has a effect or product and maximum have a byproduct called waste because a buyer has no longer been discovered yet. eating places used to throw out used fat and oils as waste until eventually a market advanced the position the oils will be rendered right into a product to feed farm animals and make fuels. Nuclear capacity flowers have not discovered a use for radioactive waste, yet and until eventually that takes position, the merely thanks to get rid of it really is to seal it below sealed landfills that couldn't let and radioactive leakage for thousands and thousands of years. someone would arise with a sparkling procedure or use and this may all replace; yet no longer to date.

Answer 3

from what ive heard the spent cooling water a.k.a. heavy water is the nasty stuff!!